Indian Government Bans Pornography, Can Fun Be Far Behind?

Shit's about to get real for the one and one quarter billion people that live in India as the country's government just instituted a ban on pornography. Technically they haven't banned all porn, just around 800 sites with more still being reviewed, but still, they banned almost all of the good ones with the rest sure to follow after that review is concluded.

According to the Hindustan Times (link below), not all of the sites banned were pornographic but all of the banned sites promoted what the government deemed to be "anti-social activities."

"Certain websites have been reviewed and found to be spreading anti-social activities as hyperlinks from these websites, some of them were pornographic, so we have sent letters to internet service providers to block them. The action has been taken in reference to section 79 of IT Act," the sources said.

Information technology secretary RS Sharma told HT that the ministry "followed court directives," a reference to an ongoing case  in the Supreme Court against adult websites.

ISPs also confirmed receiving letters on Saturday from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) directing them to block certain websites.

More such sites are being reviewed by the communications ministry upon the instructions of the court. However, senior officials acknowledged it is difficult to track sites on a regular basis.

Thankfully the Indian people aren't going to take this lying down, and have already begun a movement to reverse these ridiculous policies.

Many Indian porn lovers woke up to a rude shock in the morning, as porn sites were inaccessible on most ISPs – including Vodafone, MTNL, ACT, Hathway and BSNL. On searching for popular porn sites Pornhub and Redtube, all they ended up on were blank pages.

“When I checked last night it was opening fine, but this morning it seems all the popular porn sites are blocked,” said a Vodafone user from Kolkata.

Many of them took to social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit to vent their outrage. 

A conversation thread titled “Are porn sites getting blocked?” started on Reddit India and the hashtag #PornBan became a top Twitter trend in the morning.

Angry posts criticised service providers for blocking porn sites and satirical comments questioned what people would do with their “unlimited” data plans when internet porn is banned. Some pointed fingers at the ruling BJP, alleging that conservative mindsets were  behind the development.

BGR has also compiled a list of ways to get around the ban, so until the government figures out how to also block these loopholes, this is probably your best bet at the moment.

Via Hindustan Times